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Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

Yes.

The Communist Control Act of 1954 bans the Communist Party.

The federal law declares the party “an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow” the U.S. government.

It remains part of the U.S. Code.

The law has rarely been enforced, and Congress has repealed most of its provisions. 

Conservative Wisconsin radio talk show host Joe Giganti, discussing the Sept. 10 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, urged listeners to tell Congress the law is “a tool that needs to be utilized.”

In June, Republicans urged President Donald Trump to use the law to revoke the citizenship of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist.

Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet said the law could be enforced, in theory, against the Communist Party or members of any organization determined by a jury to have engaged in certain actions to overthrow the government.

The party remains active.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

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Tom Kertscher joined Wisconsin Watch as a full-time Milwaukee-based reporter in October 2024 after starting as a freelance Fact Briefs reporter in January 2023. In addition to contributing to Wisconsin Watch’s collaboration with The Gigafact Project to combat online misinformation, he reports on Wisconsin policy, labor, energy and the rapid expansion of data centers across the state. Kertscher is a former longtime reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine and the author of two sports books, on Al McGuire and Brett Favre.